THE NAZIS STRIKE...AGAIN!

A short time ago I authored an article ("Government Sponsored Suffering") inspired by an injury sustained by my wife. She'd injured a cervical disc and pinched a nerve and was in excruciating pain. The doctors she saw refused to give her any real help. She spent over a month in pain. I intervened and, while only a paramedic, I also had personal experience with such injuries. I happened to have on hand anti-inflammatory steroids and though I had no pain medication I had better muscle relaxers than the garbage they gave her. It took a few weeks of meds and home therapy but she is on the mend.

I wrote the article about the entity known as the DEA. These people are paid to make policy that allows good people to suffer and intimidates doctors who would wish to help them. I admit I was angry as I wrote it but my opinions still stand. These government paid Secret Police feel that the only way to stop drug seekers, prescription drug addicts, is to make all people with legitimate illnesses and injuries suffer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer angry...

I am light years past furious...

Livid is far too polite...

In the course of 1.6 secoonds today I went from concerned to pissed off. This has gone entirely too far. I hereby announce that I am waging all out WAR on the DEA, FDA, and any other government entity charged with dictating policy regarding medication use in this country. No, don't expect to see me on the steps of Capital Building with a bull horn demanding change and inciting riots. My "war" will be of the legal variety using mainstream media and every contact I have...a considerable list. I won't pull my punches and I can almost guarantee it will bring the wrath of these agencies down on my head literally and figuratively.

I could care less...

BRING IT ON!

I'm sure a few of you are wondering what could have happened to trigger this rage. Think a moment and you'll begin to see...what is the one thing that sets me off worse than anything else save child and spousal abuse...

Yes...when harm is done to my wife!

Sarah suffers from a non-specific seizure disorder. The best the neurologists have been able to surmise is that she is having a physical reaction to emotional stress, triggered by an anxiety disorder. She takes a medication that is a combination of anti-seizure and anti-anxiety drug. It is a mild benzodiazapene, not a narcotic but akin to one. She has taken this medication daily for sixteen years. Sarah has a remarkable system and she does not build up tolerances to medications like most people so instead of having to take the three pills her doctor ordered she takes three-quarters to one, once a day. Obviously no, not an addict. Her medical records bare this out is great detail.

The Problem: Since we moved to the North Metro Atlanta area Sarah has had a great doctor in Marietta, a wonderful, caring, understanding, thorough and careful man of great talent. He was not afraid to treat the whole patient. The other day Sarah looked in to her pill bottle and noticed she was running very low on her medication. She called the pharmacy only the learn that, because she takes far less than the doctor orders, her remaining refills had expired. When she called the doctors office we were both shocked to learn that her doctor had retired. The nurse told us she would check with the other doctors in the practice to see which would be handling her refills.

Several days later, after no word, Sarah called back. The news reduced her to fear and tears.

Sarah was informed that because of pending DEA legislation neither doctor was willing to refill her medication. It will soon only be possible to get such medication from a neurologist. These doctors, fearing the wrath of this out of control government agency, would not help a patient with a documented and test proven seizure disorder.

We have no health insurance. We learned that the neurologist will not even see her without collecting $1800 because it had been more than twelve months since her last visit. Sarah is down to a ten day supply of medication. We have worked so hard on her health, she has not had a major seizure in nearly two years...

But because of these Bureaucratic NAZIS all that may start to come unraveled in two weeks!

I will not deny that the epidemic of prescription drug abuse exists. I was on the front lines for years as a paramedic and dealt with these drug seekers constantly. I know this scourge effects a vast cross section of society from the homeless to the successful. I understand the progression from opioid pain meds to street narcotics such as heroin. I watched these pills tear down lives and kill.

...but I also know you don't amputate a foot for a hangnail.

In the weeks and months to come I ask you to keep track of my columns. I have not decided on a direction yet but any plan to try and build momentum toward change will in due course require you, the public, to stand and let your voice be heard. Yes my aim is lofty, to curb or eliminate or redefine the mission of a long standing government agency sounds like a pipe dream of a closet radical.

Don't bet against me.

When it comes to the suffering of my wife...the most beautiful, caring, strongest, compassionate, loving woman I've ever known...there are few lengths I will not go to. I will stop short only of breaking the law. Though she is my focal reason I can not deny I also think about all those who, like me, suffer debilitating pain every single day. I'll admit I have it bad but, in the same breath, I can say I spent fourteen years treating people who had it far worse than me...and this is also for them.

IT IS TIME WE UNTIED THE HANDS OF DOCTORS THAT WANT TO HELP OTHERS BUT CAN NOT FOR FEAR OF LOSING THEIR LIVELIHOOD!

Good people should not suffer, and if I must come under the scrutiny of this out of control agency...